DSPAM v3.0 RC1 Spam Filter Released

Nuclear Elephant writes "DSPAM v3.0 RC1 is now available for download, with a stable release scheduled for June 13. DSPAM has appeared on Slashdot and in Wired News in the past for its high levels of accurate spam filtering. v3.0 is the product of three solid months of work. Some of the highlights include a very sleek redesigned interface, PostgreSQL support, many mathematical enhancements, and support for many of Gary Robinson's algorithms (such as Chi-Square, Geometric Mean Test, and Robinson's technique for combining P-Values)."

Comments

But will it?

[ajiva]

But will it find out who sent the SPAM and hurl them into the Sun? Until I get this feature, I don't think it'll be perfect :)

Re:But will it?

[dheltzel]

I want a button on my mail client called "Retaliate", that will hunt down the sender, use various cracking techniques to take over their system, send back a copy of all their personal data, and subtly corrupt any email addresses it finds in any files or databases on the system. Optionally, it would locate some illegal content off the internet and copy it all over the filesystem, then send the IP address and other identifying info to the appropriate government agency.

That would make it fun to get Spam!

Re:Another one for the arms race...

[WormholeFiend]

what I really like about this arms race is that news stories about "how bad spam is" are becoming a regular feature in numerous media outlets...

what that means is that the opinion of the silent majority is being moved toward "angry mob" status, which, I believe will lead to the downfall of the Spam Kings.

so if anyone is interested, I'm planning on opening an online store specializing in torches and pitchforks...

Re:Yay, we fixed spam!

[lawngnome]

While I agree that this is not a cure all for spam, the bottom line is that it will make a difference. Spam only happens because people buy the crap they're offering. Stop the cash and spam will stop as a result, or evolve into huge robots that come to your house and steal gas from your car... gas stealing bastards, wilson I know you were behind this !!! Was this post informative, funny, offtopic or all three? I leave that up to you to ponder... :)

Re:Another one for the arms race...

[Kwil]

Hey, you should send out some email about this service, I bet people would love the chance to buy in.

Why, I think I know a place where you can send email to up to 2 million addresses for only...

Re:It takes a lot to train

[geirt]

You must be doing something wrong then. I get about 10-20 emails a day (the rest is spam). Blew away everything and started from scratch a couple months ago for fun, and i'm getting 99.95% accuracy.

So, you get 0.05% spam. Two months with 20 mails a day = 1200 mails. 0.05% of 1200 is 0.6. So, did you get a spam mail in the last two months, or not?

Obligatory

[jonfelder]

Your post advocates a

( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based (*) vigilante ( ) lack of an

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(*) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
(*) The police will not put up with it
(*) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(*) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

(*) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(*) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(*) Asshats
(*) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(*) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(*) Extreme profitability of spam
(*) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(*) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(*) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(*) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) No-lists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(*) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(*) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(*) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(*) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

Re:Another one for the arms race...

[feargal]

I always wondered why angry mobs wait until nighttime. If they just rampaged during the day, they wouldn't need the torches, and could carry machetes instead.